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Financial Software

How do you choose the right financial software for your company?

You know it’s time to change to new financial software. You’ve analyzed what is and isn’t working and what your new system must provide to improve your organization. But how do you ensure that you’ve thoroughly documented your needs and are ready to complete a careful “no surprises” decision process?

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While there are countless new systems you could choose, you don’t have the time or resources to fully review hundreds of choices. It’s best to narrow the alternatives down to a manageable short list—no more than five vendors (three is ideal). You’ll use your short list to drive a detailed software evaluation.

Next, dig a little deeper. Ask each vendor for a personalized demonstration that closely matches your business and the requirements you’ve identified. Ask for customer references and customer success stories. Be sure to tap into review sites for additional references and independent opinions.

Before making a final decision on new financial software, identify how each system would work for your business. Make sure you can customize each application to suit your specific needs. How will it integrate with the other key applications you have in place, like Salesforce? Does that functionality already exist “out of the box”, or will it need to be custom-built? Be careful—some vendors try to steer you into a “one-size-fits-none” application, without any concern for your desire to deploy the best applications for each of your departments.

If you have cloud vendors on your list—and you should—take the time to understand what service level agreements (SLAs) they offer to govern their performance in areas such as application availability, security, and reliability. For example, Sage Intacct offers customers the Buy with Confidence™ guarantee that outlines, with full transparency, the level of service you can expect from Sage Intacct.

The last step is, in many ways, the most important&nmdash;and one that comes naturally to financial pros: run the numbers. Compare the total cost of ownership (TCO) of an on-premises system vs. a cloud solution. Since it isn’t necessarily “apples-to-apples,” be sure to factor in the fully loaded costs needed to support that software such as upfront hardware, software, maintenance, security, back-up, IT labor, and more.

Once they do their homework, an overwhelming number of companies choose cloud computing and Sage Intacct to transform their finance organizations into strategic, forward-thinking business leaders. Contact Sage Intacct to learn more.

As a result of all our productivity improvements, my team has been able to keep up with Mountainside’s expansion without adding the 5-6 full and part-time employees we originally anticipated.